My face is red, don’t laugh

                Doojoon thinks that if Yoseob starts punching and slapping that wall any harder, the school’s poor custodians are going to have to re-cement it again. He thinks that if Yoseob keeps this up, the younger boy’s probably going to start suffocating soon, and then Doojoon’s going to have to give him CPR and everyone’s just going to end up blaming Doojoon that Yoseob has to be rushed to the hospital because he’s blocked out his airways. And he also thinks that Yoseob probably deserves it anyhow so maybe Doojoon will just forego the CPR completely and call an ambulance while the goalie is still conscious.

                “It’s not funny,” Doojoon says, even though he’s been saying this for the past five minutes, and Yoseob has been laughing for the past five minutes, which clearly means there is something amusing here that Doojoon doesn’t find very humorous at all.

                Yoseob turns around from the wall and faces back to Doojoon, the younger boy’s eyes still scrunched up in laughter, one arm loosely wrapped around his stomach. “No,” he gasps, leaning against the wall for support, “no, hyung, it’s like ing hilarious.”

                “No, it’s not,” Doojoon insists, huffing, and adjusting his backpack straps. If Yoseob is going to keep laughing like this, then Doojoon might as well just leave regardless of the fact that they’re carpooling together. Yoseob can just walk home for all the older boy cares.

                But then Yoseob suddenly reaches out, grabbing Doojoon’s sleeve. “No,” he says, no longer laughing, but he still has a wide grin on his face, “it is—it really is.” And then Yoseob slides his hand down from Doojoon’s sleeve, slipping into the older boy’s own hand. “But I like it,” Yoseob says, “it’s cute.”

                Doojoon yanks his hand away and shoves the laughing goalie to the side as the older boy starts heading down to the gates. “I’m never kissing you again,” Doojoon calls over his shoulder as he walks away while Yoseob jogs after him unsteadily because the er is still laughing.

                Yoseob catches up to him by the time Doojoon reaches the gate that his driver is supposed to pick them up from. Doojoon falls forward a step as the younger boy collides into his side, arms thrown around Doojoon’s waist. “Hyung,” Yoseob says cheerily, voice muffled because his face is buried in Doojoon’s chest.

                “What?” Doojoon says, and purposefully makes his voice uninterested and indifferent as he remains still—doesn’t move or react because he’s still supposed to be irritated at the fact that Yoseob laughed for so long and so hard just because Doojoon’s face might have turned a wide array of colors when the younger boy surprised him with a tongue in Doojoon’s mouth and a hand beneath Doojoon’s shirt.

                “Let’s see a movie on Sunday,” and Yoseob looks up with a grin that lights up his entire face, eyes deep and bright and perfect in the late afternoon sunlight.

                Doojoon rolls his eyes, biting his lip to keep the smile in, and instantaneously throws his own arms around Yoseob, holding the other boy so close and tight that Yoseob starts complaining about how he’s starting to lose feeling in his face. Yoseob starts to complain and flail and squirm but Doojoon doesn’t think he can let go even if he wants to.

Even though I feel like my heart is going to explode

                Doojoon knows that he has a lot to live up to—he knows that Yoseob’s been and seen and done it all seventeen times, and that the goalie’s been and seen and done it all seventeen times wrong. Doojoon knows that not only does he have a lot to live up to—he has a lot of fixing to do, of mending and putting back together, and cleaning up after seventeen bastards before him.

                And he knows that Yoseob’s trying, too. He knows now that it’s hard for Yoseob, hard to remember sometimes that Doojoon isn’t like them—that Doojoon won’t ever be like them even if the barrel of a gun is pressed to his head. It’s hard for Yoseob to remember sometimes, but Doojoon doesn’t care. Doojoon doesn’t mind waiting, doesn’t mind doing whatever he needs to do to show Yoseob that he’s Doojoon—he’s Yoon Doojoon and not Hwang Dongsun.

                Plus, he doesn’t think he could ever handle Yoseob begging him not to leave and clinging to him like that again.

But because I don’t have confidence

                Sometimes Doojoon wonders how Junhyung does it.

                Doojoon has a lot to live up to and a lot to fix, but Junhyung has it just as bad. Junhyung has to live up to Kwon Jiyoung, and he has to fix a kind of pain that’s just as bad as Yoseob’s. Yoseob doesn’t feel any sort of attachment to the Dongsuns—just a lingering sort of thing that’s full of hurt and confusion. Hyunseung—they still don’t know what Hyunseung feels towards his old school—whether it’s resentment or peace or maybe even still a sort of longing. Junhyung has to fix all of that.

                But—

                Junhyung makes it look easy.

                Junhyung makes it look so easy, so effortless, with his arm around Hyunseung’s waist as they stand in the middle of the field, listening to Junho’s new plan of directions on getting across the field in a certain formation. Junhyung always makes it seem so simple, touching Hyunseung lightly on the head whenever Hyunseung seems upset or downcast—taking Hyunseung by the hand when they’re both headed for the locker rooms after practice. Junhyung does it all easily.

                Junhyung does it all easily—like he can read Hyunseung’s mind, like he always knows the right thing to do at the right time in the right way to make everything right.

                And while Doojoon wouldn’t exactly say that he’s jealous of that, he does wonder if he’ll be able to do that for Yoseob someday. He wonders, and he hopes that Yoseob won’t mind being a little patient with Doojoon too.

I can’t hide it anymore

                Yoseob doesn’t even react—well—no, okay, he reacts, but from the reflection in the mirrors in the locker rooms, it’s more just a lot of blinking until the goalie turns his head around to look at Doojoon. The goalie turns his head and directs the blinking at Doojoon. “What,” he says—or maybe he asks, but there’s not enough inflection in his voice at the end for it to really sound like a question.

                “What?” Doojoon shoots back and tightens his arms around Yoseob’s stomach. He raises his eyebrows at the younger boy.

                Yoseob blinks some more. “You’re hugging me.”

                Doojoon grins. “Yeah, I am.”

                This time the blinking is accompanied with some eyebrow-furrowing. “We can’t make-out in here, hyung.”

                The older boy tips his head to the side and rests his chin on Yoseob’s shoulder. “Who said anything about making out?” It’s not a real question—not something he actually wants an answer to because Doojoon already knows the answer. He knows exactly who said something about making out. He knows exactly, so he takes his arms away from Yoseob’s waist and turns the goalie around, taking the towel that’s around the younger boy’s neck and putting it onto Yoseob’s head.

                “Hyung, I can’t see—” Yoseob starts, a little laughter in his voice.

                “You don’t need to see,” Doojoon says, and starts ruffling the towel over the other boy’s hair. “You just need to actually dry your hair so you don’t get a cold and Junho-hyung doesn’t die of heart failure because we don’t have a goalie.”

                Yoseob snorts. “So it’s just for Junho-hyung, then?”

                Doojoon smiles to himself, glad that Yoseob can’t see at the moment. He finishes drying the other boy’s hair, and bends his knees slightly so that when he takes the towel away, their faces are level and he can catch Yoseob’s lips for just a few seconds before drawing away.

                “Just for Junho-hyung,” Doojoon grins, and Yoseob hits him with the towel.

I will now run to you

                Doojoon wonders if maybe this is why back in ancient times, it was considered better for women to stay out of the sun—to wear those humongous hats that Doojoon always personally thought looked like 2-in-1 safety weapons. He wonders if maybe this is why, because even though Yoseob is obviously not a girl, Doojoon thinks that it’s probably around the same sort of theme or message or lesson or whatever the .

                Actually, he’s pretty sure this is it.

                He’s pretty sure that the way the sunlight catches on Yoseob’s hair, the way the sunlight makes his skin pale and bright and brings just hints of color to his cheeks because they’ve been walking through the streets for at least half an hour now and the day is warming up. He’s pretty sure that the way Yoseob is laughing at a few nearby pigeons trying to hop away from some children chasing them—pretty sure that the way the daylight makes laughter like that ring like bells—

                Doojoon is pretty sure this is the reason that women were kept inside.

                The men would never get any work done otherwise.

                And while it would do Doojoon’s heart a lot of good to keep Yoseob locked away where no one else could see him (or hurt him, or harm him, or take him away), it’d also probably be Doojoon doing the world a huge, grave, personal wrong.

                Because he’s also pretty sure that not letting the world see Yang Yoseob would bring out the apocalypse.

Going closer confidently

                Time, Doojoon thinks, makes everything better—makes everything easier, makes it flow more smoothly, makes it and helps it fall into place. It makes taking care of Yoseob easier, makes their dates—those moments when Doojoon can tell that Yoseob is confused, that Yoseob’s afraid, that the younger boy doesn’t know what to do because he knows that he doesn’t have to do it the way he did seventeen times before but he doesn’t know how to do it now either. It makes and helps the way they fit fall into place.

                Because now he knows.

                Now he knows that when Yoseob tongues him, when Yoseob slips his fingers underneath Doojoon’s shirt—Doojoon doesn’t have to be afraid, doesn’t have to be careful of touching him back, of slipping his own tongue past Yoseob’s lips, of clutching the younger boy’s shirt in his fists and dragging them behind a tree, behind a wall so Yonghwa and Joon won’t start complaining about the inability to un-see.

                Now he knows that when Yoseob is upset, is downcast, Doojoon is the person that can make him laugh the easiest. Doojoon is the first person Yoseob wants to see, wants to be with, whenever the goalie’s day hasn’t gone the best and now, Doojoon knows that this isn’t overestimating—this isn’t being arrogant because that’s just the truth. It’s just a fact, and Doojoon is glad as that it is.

                Now he knows that he doesn’t have to work so hard to prove himself against seventeen bastards because Yoseob knows, maybe better than Doojoon could ever hope to know himself—better than Doojoon could ever prove anyway—because Yoseob already knows that Doojoon is Doojoon. Yoseob already knows, and even though it’s still hard sometimes, Yoseob wants as much as Doojoon does to make the eighteenth time the last one.

Watch out, there’s a man who only looks at you

                Doojoon would like to think that he’s someone who doesn’t get confused all that often. He would like to think that he’s someone who generally has a good grip on the state of things that are going on around him. He would like to think that he’s someone who usually always knows what’s happening—would like to think that he can easily sense the atmosphere and read the situation accurately and easily. He would like to think all of this, but he supposes that right now, that’s just not meant to be because Doojoon is currently, extremely, confused.

                And Yoseob isn’t helping any.

                The younger boy is definitely not helping any by continuing to sit there across the table at the mall’s food court, smoothie sitting in front of him and looking back at Doojoon just as confused as the older boy is.

                “What?” Doojoon asks for the third time because he still doesn’t get it, and he wishes Yoseob would actually speak and tell him something.

                Yoseob just continues to look as utterly baffled as Doojoon feels, and then shakes his head faintly. “I mean—hyung—nothing, it’s just,” his eyes dart to the side briefly and then back to Doojoon. “Hyung, that girl just—like—looked at you. Like—a look-look.”

                Doojoon’s eyebrows furrow. “So?”

                “She’s from that school we had a match at last week, remember?” Yoseob asks, and sounds more and more faint and disbelieving as this goes on. “That cheerleader that had Chansung, like, tripping over grass? She’s like the Joonie-hyung of that school only in skirt-version and she just smiled at you—like, just now.” Yoseob tips his head discreetly to the left and Doojoon directs his eyes to where Yoseob is motioning.

                True enough, there’s a girl there. Sort of familiar. Probably that cheerleader, except Doojoon doesn’t even remember whether there were cheerleaders or not at that game. He just remembers how Yoseob stopped the other team from scoring and snatching a goal in the last few seconds. He feels himself unintentionally making a face when the girl catches his eye and starts smiling again. “I mean,” Doojoon says, trying to sound thoughtful as he turns his gaze back onto Yoseob, “she’s kind of pretty, I guess, if you like that kind of thing.”

                “Hyung, she’s hot,” Yoseob says, still in that tone that suggests something is clearly wrong with Doojoon’s vision or mentality or both. “Wait—and what sort of thing?”

                Doojoon grins. “The sort of thing that’s not Yang Yoseob,” he says cheekily, leaning forward.

                “You’re gross, hyung,” Yoseob shoots back with a smile and kicks Doojoon under the table (Doojoon doesn’t retort even though he has a perfect one up his sleeve about how Yoseob’s ears match the color of his smoothie now).

                The older boy just laughs, and in the end, Yoseob has to tell him again when the girl and her friends leave because Doojoon honestly thought that those cheerleaders must have possessed teleportation skills. He couldn’t, for the life of him, remember them either walking in or out of the food court.

Watch out, I staked my all because of love

                It doesn’t take a lot to have a bad day in high school.

                It takes maybe a C on a quiz that you studied for all night, maybe a check-minus on a paper you spent three days writing nonstop, maybe a D on a test that you’ve been paying rapt attention in class for during the past three weeks even though you still didn’t understand a thing and there were no chances to ask questions or stay after school with the teacher.

                It doesn’t take a lot to have a bad day in high school when you’re still young, when your world still revolves around parents and grades and teachers and friends and boyfriends and girlfriends, and while any one of those three is cause enough for a bad day, coupled with maybe the fact that Junhyung is fighting with Hyunseung again and has to talk about it with someone and Yoseob ends up being that someone, along with the fact that for Yoseob—a top student—didn’t only get one of the three, but every single one of those three.

                Yoseob is having a bad day—an awful day—and it’s different, it’s different from when they were just friends because back then, Doojoon would try to cheer him up. Doojoon would , would joke around with him, would try to get him at least smiling a little bit, but at the end of the day, when they were still just friends—they were still just friends. It ended at that, and Doojoon didn’t go any deeper because he wouldn’t have known what to do anyway.

                And while he still doesn’t really know what to do now, he feels like he should—he feels like he should know what to do the way Junhyung always seems to know what to do for Hyunseung. He still isn’t sure what he should do or if he should do anything at all so when he does try something—when he does decide to try in the form of quietly sitting next to Yoseob on the bench near the gates while they’re waiting for their rides home and asking him slowly about Junhyung, asking him how the fight’s cooling down, asking him if maybe Doojoon can go over to his house later and help him look through the test and quiz and paper—

                When he does decide to try, Yoseob doesn’t respond. Yoseob doesn’t respond, simply continues to stare at the ground, elbows resting on his thighs, back hunched.

                Doojoon tries again—slides in just a bit closer, and makes to take one of Yoseob’s hands.

                Yoseob pulls away. He moves his hand out of Doojoon’s reach. “I’m fine, hyung,” he says tonelessly, and stands up before Doojoon can even wrap his mind around what he’s supposed to do now. Yoseob stands up and walks away.

                Doojoon doesn’t really sleep—not really. He spends most of the night sitting in bed with his cell phone in his lap, wondering if he should call or not. He’s not angry—not upset. A little bit hurt, but nothing that he’s really stung over about. He knows Yoseob didn’t mean it—knows that Yoseob’s just tired of Junhyung and Hyunseung fighting even though he always makes sure his shoulder is there at the ready whenever Junhyung needs it.

                Doojoon isn’t mad.

                He just wishes that the goalie would know that Doojoon’s shoulder is always there at the ready whenever Yoseob needs it.

Gotcha, just like the gradually blazing fire

                They have an extended homeroom the next day because of a teacher’s meeting.

                Doojoon has barely reached his desk when Yoseob walks up to him through the rows of desks, face tipped toward the ground, a textbook and a few papers in his hands as he stands before the older boy. He realizes that those papers are the test and quiz and paper from yesterday and that the textbook is the one from the class they’re in. He doesn’t, however, really understand why Yoseob isn’t looking at his face—doesn’t really understand why Yoseob is still staring at the floor because Doojoon doesn’t think that that’s something Yang Yoseob should ever do.

                He takes the book and papers out of Yoseob’s hands, putting them onto the older boy’s own desk, dropping his backpack onto his chair after that. “Need some help?” Doojoon asks gently, lightly, casually, reaching out to straighten the fold in Yoseob’s collar.

                “I’m sorry,” Yoseob says quietly, “about yesterday.” He looks up slightly, mouth tight and expression nervous.

                Doojoon’s eyes flicker unintentionally above Yoseob’s head—over toward one side of the classroom, where Junhyung is sitting at his desk, staring down at something beneath his desk and Doojoon knows that the other boy is trying his ing hardest texting a certain someone in the J homeroom nonstop even when that certain someone isn’t replying. Doojoon knows that Junhyung doesn’t mean to do it, but he thinks that if Yoseob gets hurt anymore, best friend or no, Junhyung is going to have to go through Doojoon to get to Yoseob’s shoulder.

                He knows that’s terrible—knows it’s selfish and awful, but as he checks the door briefly to make sure that there aren’t any teachers passing by before he leans down and kisses Yoseob (kisses away unneeded apologies)—he knows it’s not right, knows it’s far from right and that Junhyung and Hyunseung are his teammates and friends—it’s just—

                Junhyung and Hyunseung have to realize that while they are Doojoon’s teammates and best friends—

                Yoseob is a little more than all of that.

Watch out, a man who loves you has come

                It’s easy—very easy—to understand why when after Junhyung screams at Hyunseung from across the field, after that nightmare happens, after Hyunseung stalks off without a word, after even Junho is left speechless and unknowing of what to do next because he’s the team’s captain and not the team’s emotional counselor and is just as confused as the rest of them because while Junhyung and Hyunseung have always fought, it’s never gotten to this point—

                It’s very easy to understand why, afterward, a day after that—because Yoseob spends that actual night at Junhyung’s house—it’s understandable why the soonest chance Yoseob gets to sleepover at Doojoon’s house, it’s spent with little words and a lot of silence and not much of anything except Yoseob lying against Doojoon in bed, completely and utterly still with his chest rising and falling in soft, little breaths that make Doojoon’s heart ache.

                It’s easy to understand, because Doojoon feels it, too.

                He feels it, and he’s sure that everyone on the team feels it, but most of all—most of all—Yoseob feels it.

                Yoseob feels it most of all, Doojoon knows, because Junhyung and Hyunseung were supposed to be everything stable and right with the world. Junhyung and Hyunseung, even though they’re younger than Doojoon, were the perfect example of working out differences and unhappy pasts because nothing can stop them from being with each other. They were they perfect example, they were always there—since the first day, they were always there—and out of the blue, they ended and nobody knows why. Nobody knows why, and that’s the part that scares them all less.

                But the reason Doojoon is scared and the reason Yoseob is scared aren’t the same reasons why the team is scared. Doojoon is scared because in the past two days since the break-up, Junhyung has looked so miserable, has looked like he’s in such pain, that Doojoon doesn’t want to imagine what it’d be like to be in his place—Hyunseung was the one who did the leaving and if Junhyung couldn’t do anything to stop it, then Doojoon knows that if it were him, he’d be just as powerless and mere thoughts of that already hurt.

                Yoseob is scared, Doojoon knows, because the moment anything stable starts to shake, Yoseob gets reminded about seventeen periods of instability and uncertainty and how it’s inevitable that at one point or another, something like this makes Yoseob start to wonder if this eighteenth period could end at any moment—spontaneously and instantaneously just like Junhyung and Hyunseung did.

                Neither of them get any sleep that night.

                The goalie doesn’t cry—doesn’t show any real signs of being upset, nothing to suggest anything except weariness in his expression. He just shakes against Doojoon’s body, arms so tight around the older boy’s waist that Doojoon thinks he might have bruises in the morning. It’s not violent shaking, nothing like huge, wracking sobs—just small shivers that if Doojoon didn’t know better, he’d think that it’s just because Yoseob is cold. Yoseob doesn’t say anything, doesn’t talk, doesn’t ask Doojoon to tell him anything.

                But Doojoon already knows without asking.

                He knows that even though Yoseob’s not making a sound, the younger boy is asking him the same question over and over again—louder with each repetition. He knows that Yoseob is asking him a question, the same question, so Doojoon answers it. He answers it out loud in a tiny whisper with his lips against the crown of Yoseob’s head, and repeats it all night long. He repeats it until he feels like I’m not leaving is engraved on his lips forever.

Forever, forever—I’ll only love you

                Doojoon thinks that it’d really if he was held responsible for all of their AP Gov class’s broken cell phones just because Yoseob thinks it’s a good idea for some reason to launch himself at Doojoon after the captain finishes talking to Joon about how to sneak near the principal’s office without being asked any questions. Although he also thinks that their teacher probably shouldn’t have put the cell phone bin on the floor because that’s just asking for twenty-or-so homicidal teenagers.

                Really.

                But it’s automatic—it’s automatic and built into him that his arms instantly come up to catch the goalie and move them both backwards out of the classroom since the exams are finished and they both have their backpacks and cell phones already anyway. He backs them out of the classroom, and while he’s at it—while the hallway is still relatively empty and quiet—spins Yoseob around in his arms until the younger boy starts slapping Doojoon’s shoulders to stop.

                When Doojoon sets Yoseob back on the floor and the goalie is clutching the side of his head and trying to glower at Doojoon through the dizziness, the captain just shrugs. “That’s what you get for almost making me break everyone’s phones.”

                Yoseob shoves at Doojoon’s chest without any bite. “I was going to ask you what you thought of the exam, but I guess you’re too terrible of a boyfriend to care,” the goalie says huffily and pretends to walk away—slowly, because Doojoon knows what Yoseob really was going to ask, and tries not to laugh as he grabs the younger boy by the waist with both hands, stopping his so-called exit without much strength.

                “How about,” Doojoon starts playfully, pulling Yoseob behind a column, his lips right against the other boy’s ear, the goalie’s back pressed against the captain’s chest, “Saturday afternoon? I want to say two, but it might have to be at three since Doori might need my driver’s car to head back to university.”

                The goalie turns around in Doojoon’s arms with a smile. “Three’s cool. My dad just had this new place opened a few days ago. The chefs are all French.”

                “Perfect,” Doojoon says, right before he covers that smile with one of his own.